The Incredible odds of fulfilled bible prophecy
- Thread starter DOC
- Start date
Well..... In Alexander's Case the virgin that gave birth to him was Angelina Jolie...... yes she IS a virgin.... cut your tongue out if you say otherwise you heretic.
Seriously though.... legends around both the characters is that their mothers were impregnated by GODS and not human men..... just like Jesus.
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That is abject nonsense. We have the equivalent of a signature: coins struck in Caesar's name and with his portrait. As we have for Alexander. We don't require a paper with someone's signature to prove the person signed it. If trustworthy historians inform us that the paper was signed, that is good evidence.
There is ample evidence for Alexander, like the remains of cities he founded on the territory of conquered Egypt and Persia, and named after himself. Caesar's conquest of Gaul has left traces in the archaeological record. Moreover, the deeds attributed to these rulers by Greek and Roman historians are entirely plausible, and require no belief in miracles.
In the East there are story tellers who attribute all manner of miraculous deeds to a mythicised Alexander. These stories we are under no more obligation to believe than the even taller tales that have crystallised around the name of the mythicised Jesus.
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Mojo
Mostly harmless
Yes, but they didn't sign these objects. At least I hope not.
Rincewind
Philosopher
AFAIK nobody here has DOC's signature.
Does that mean that DOC doesn't exist?
D'you see what I'm saying here, DOC?
Does that mean that DOC doesn't exist?
D'you see what I'm saying here, DOC?
Are we really doing the whole "Jesus never existed" thing again?
Loath as I am to defend DOC, I think the fact that Jesus' story is so contradictory to what messianic Jews expected of their messiah, that it was most likely based on a real person.
I've just been reading a book: "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Jewish origins of Christianity" by Carsten Peter Thiede, in an attempt to learn more about this subject. The Author puts a good case that cave seven at Qumran contained a copy of the gospel of Mark. If true, it means that Mark was written before 70CE.
I just found this review:
This Thiede guy was certainly not a fan of Robert Eisenman, but I seem to have a knack for finding oddball interpretations of the DSS. Oh well, as far as I can tell, everyone's interpretation of the DSS is considered oddball by someone.
My point here is that a lot of Jews at the time said that Jesus wasn't the Messiah (he was just a naughty boy!), but none of them were saying that he didn't exist.
Loath as I am to defend DOC, I think the fact that Jesus' story is so contradictory to what messianic Jews expected of their messiah, that it was most likely based on a real person.
I've just been reading a book: "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Jewish origins of Christianity" by Carsten Peter Thiede, in an attempt to learn more about this subject. The Author puts a good case that cave seven at Qumran contained a copy of the gospel of Mark. If true, it means that Mark was written before 70CE.
I just found this review:
http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/JHS/reviews/review039.htm
This Thiede guy was certainly not a fan of Robert Eisenman, but I seem to have a knack for finding oddball interpretations of the DSS. Oh well, as far as I can tell, everyone's interpretation of the DSS is considered oddball by someone.
My point here is that a lot of Jews at the time said that Jesus wasn't the Messiah (he was just a naughty boy!), but none of them were saying that he didn't exist.
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
I'll bet he doesn't, any more than he won't see that according to his "no signature/no existence" rule nobody existed in Europe until about the sixth century CE and nobody existed anywhere on Earth until about the second century CE.
Furthermore, if only people who can sign their names are counted then the current world population is likely be out by as much as a billion.
Not generally accepted, and with good reason. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7Q5 where Thiede's identification of the Qumran fragment with a passage from Mark is dismissed as almost universally rejected. Treat Thiede with extreme caution when you encounter him in your learning process.
joobz
Tergiversator
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This logic is UTTERLY flawed.... in a fictional story ANYTHING can be envisioned and contrived to make the story more interesting.
Just because Sherlock Holmes ILLOGICALLY took heroine does not mean that he was real. Just because Hercule Poirot ILLEGALLY planned and killed an enemy does not mean he was real. Just because Zeus went around UNGODLY raping virgins does not mean that he was real.
In any case have a look at this book which has an interesting hypothesis that the whole Jesus story was fabricated by the Roman Falvian Imperial dynasty to SUBVERT the Jewish rebellious and troublesome messianic sects by giving them a peaceful pacifist messiah to believe in.
Yeah, there are about a million different theories about all this stuff.
I'm still inclined to think that a totally invented Jesus would have met with more opposition than a failed fanatic Jesus.
There really is no need to invent a person from scratch, just attach whatever Theological nonsense you like to an already known Preacher and you avoid the problem of people saying that they never even heard of the guy.
Why go to all of the trouble of saying "Prophets have no honour in their own land", if no one from Galilee was saying, "Yeah, we knew that guy and he was just a crazy son of a carpenter...", if he was a total invention? I mean why bother to account for his unpopularity in a particular region if he was never anywhere at all?
Surely he would have been equally unpopular in Galilee as anywhere else, if he never existed...
This is what it says:
There are numerous surviving ancient Greek and Latin sources on Alexander {The Great}, as well as some oriental texts. None is contemporary.
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
You missed the whole rest of the article mentioning the works of Arrian, Plutarch, Diodorus, Curtius and Justin, and the primary sources that they used to complete their accounts of Alexander's life, did you?
Try scrolling down a bit.
Also, speaking of missing things, you seem to have missed most of the post of mine that you're pretending to respond to above.
Check it out . . .
Care to have another go?
Or I'll let you off the hook if you just give a straight answer to the following questions:
- Do you believe that Julius Cæsar existed? Why?
- Do you believe that Alexander the Great existed. Why?
Please note that I asked for a straight answer.
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X
Slide Rulez 4 Life
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2007
- Messages
- 4,127
Did you read this bit?
The primary sources written by people who actually knew Alexander or who gathered information from men who served with Alexander, are all lost, apart from a few inscriptions and fragments.
Contemporaries who wrote accounts of his life include Alexander's campaign historian Callisthenes; Alexander's generals Ptolemy and Nearchus; Aristobulus, a junior officer on the campaigns; and Onesicritus, Alexander's chief helmsman.
Finally, there is the very influential account of Cleitarchus who, while not a direct witness of Alexander's expedition, used sources which had just been published.[1] His work was to be the backbone of that of Timagenes, who heavily influenced many historians whose work still survives. None of his works survived, but we do have later works based on these primary sources.
Contemporaries who wrote accounts of his life include Alexander's campaign historian Callisthenes; Alexander's generals Ptolemy and Nearchus; Aristobulus, a junior officer on the campaigns; and Onesicritus, Alexander's chief helmsman.
Finally, there is the very influential account of Cleitarchus who, while not a direct witness of Alexander's expedition, used sources which had just been published.[1] His work was to be the backbone of that of Timagenes, who heavily influenced many historians whose work still survives. None of his works survived, but we do have later works based on these primary sources.
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Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
Guess who, DOC?
I find it baffling that you can have 6600 posts on Jref, and still not find this claim self-evidently stupid. Perhaps try more critical thinking, less copy pasting looney blogs.
Also I went ahead and read this esteemed astrophysicist's biography, and he seems amazingly well educated. Almost bafflingly so, for someone who can say that Noah's Ark is a scientifically accurate historical account with a straight face.
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amb
Unregistered
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- Dec 11, 2007
- Messages
- 18,777
Are any of the Star Wars characters or Start Trek characters based on any real people?
How many fans follow these characters so AVIDLY?
Why would some Star Wars fans be in fact supporters of Darth Vader in preference to the good heroes?
Why would people go to the extent of learning Clingon (a fictional language) and ADMIRE Clingons?
Why would people spend the time and effort to learn Elvish or Middle Earth geography?
A lot of fiction is based upon an AMALGAMATION of FACTORS.
It is a fact that in that era there were SCADS of apocalyptic preachers claiming to be messiahs.
The Jesus myth could be based upon ALL of these charlatans rather than ONE PARTICULAR character.
If I am going to write a story about microbiologists that invent a cure for a contagion
then I might base it on an AMALGAM OF personalities that I might be familiar with directly or even one personality.However, if I did not know any myself but I am familiar that there are people who do that kind of work I would base my protagonists on the CONCEPT of microbiologists rather than on a particular one actual person who is a microbiologist.
Since the writers of the gospels never met Jesus and since Paul never met Jesus then the only people who told us about Jesus never in fact met any person called Jesus.
So the whole thing is a myth based upon a FICTIONAL EXAMPLE of the PLETHORA of messiah pretenders many of whom may have in fact been crucified. If you know about the Essenes and the Dead Sea Scrolls.... they had a leader who got crucified on a tree.... unfortunately a few decades before the supposed Jesus.
So the whole myth could be the work of a FERTILE mind based on an AMALGAM of mythological traditions and other events but not on a PARTICULAR ONE person..... they are based on the IDEA of a class of persons.
Question..... have you ever taken a class in CREATIVE WRITING?
Do you know how to create a BELIEVABLE and thrilling STORY?
According to your logic…. Hercule Poirot is based on a real character….. how could it be possible for Agatha Christie, an English woman, to make Poirot a Belgian who is always mistaken for French? I mean if she did not really have a real person she was basing the character in her fiction upon then why on earth would this BRITISH lady make her character to be a FOREIGN character. How could a WOMAN know about what it takes to care and pamper a MUSTACHE. How could she be able to describe all these actions Poirot took to wax and net his mustache. What about Hastings? Could he have been a real character too?
Why would Homer make it so that Athena who is a goddess actually dip Achilles in the holy fire and make him impregnable but miss that heel?
Why would Rowling write Harry Potter the hero of her story to be FEEBLE and less intelligent than some half muggle girl wizard? Why would she make Hermione a half muggle if she is so great a witch?
Was there really a Scrooge? Was there really an Oliver Twist? Was there really a Sherlock Holmes?
All of these are FLAWED characters who were described to be within FLAWED worlds and places and with FLAWED actions and experiencing the occasional very MUNDANE occurrences.
If you know about GOOD FICTION WRITING you would know that what it takes to make a story good and believable is to write it based on reality……….but not any PARTICULAR REALITY rather on a CLASS of reality.
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